At this hour, my room is soaked in the most natural blue – an unadulterated hue stolen from the horizon that is in passing at the hour. In a minute, the land will be dark and it would be night. In this reverse of dawn, I’m transported back into the mornings of my childhood. I’m asleep, and I’m waking up in both. In this current dusk, I hear the sounds of the buses that pass by on the main street, motorists that return home (for my street is one way) and leave trails of headlights on my wall mounted cabinets. The fan whirs. Loudly. And quiet. In the morning, I suppose, the hue remains, the buses too. The difference being, the scooter that delivers the morning’s newspapers; the hard slam the thick pile of censored selected information makes on the tiled floors in the neighborhood, resounding, almost a rhythm – the Indian man smiling, as I walk out of the gate, waiting for my school bus. Good morning, child! And no one says morning beyond child. Both times, I wake up reluctantly. Once out of the parental compulsion to go to school. This current one –hunger.

I have to see Clifford Pier everyday on my way to work. On Tuesday I said to myself I will take pictures of it. It’s so beautiful, that I’m sure it would be destroyed. On Wednesday I saw red-white (lacking blue) plastic tapes that sealed the entrance. Commuters ignored this fragile demarcation and still used it as a faster route to Change Alley. We stepped on it. On Thursday, the metal barricades went up. My nightmare came true in two days. Today they’ve painted ‘Up For Tender’ in a bright purple green and blue.

If a building can be gone like this, I thought, everything can.

Boo says, “…It’s sad. People and places alike have to ‘reinvent’ and stay ‘relevant’. If it’s any consolation at all, at least it’ll have a new lease of life and will be remembered in a different light, unlike many others that have vanished from the face of this earth physically and in memory.”